


Almost

by DictionaryWrites2



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, Gang Rape, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 04:57:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18793459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites2/pseuds/DictionaryWrites2
Summary: Demons have an odd relationship with pain.When it comes to laying divine punishment on the back of the demon Crowley, Zadkiel has the most inspired idea. Did you ever hear the human saying, "Kill them with kindness"?





	1. Hell

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Beautiful illustration of this fic!](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/494050) by nb_santiago. 



> There will be a VERY happy ending to this, I swear! It's just very, very awful, first.
> 
> The consent issues in this one are kinda difficult to explain in the tags, but I'm effectively playing with that idea of Crowley being cut off from the Host, and really feeling that loss as something missing from himself, and the consent issues kind of inherent in chasing that sense of wholeness again, but... In a very dubious consent way from angels who are specifically exploiting that sense of loss to torture him. Lots of Grace v. unholy energy here, and so forth, and it's... Very dark, before it's light again.

Crowley didn’t remember Heaven.

Or—

He did, sometimes. In a way. It was hard to explain, and it was made harder to explain by the fact that he would never explain it to anybody, even – and especially – if they asked.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

In The Beginning[1], Crowley knew only pain.

It didn’t last very long, but that was because time hadn’t really been invented yet, and subsequently, even the things that felt like eternity felt quite a lot like a few seconds. He remembered that feeling very well, because it felt like he’d been cleaved in two, like he’d been in a warm room and suddenly thrown out into the cold, like he was gasping for air with lungs that wouldn’t work, like  _loss_.

It was indescribable, a sensation of deep, desperate emptiness, like a section of him was missing, and in that moment, it had been impossible, an agony that felt like it would never go away.

That was, of course, because it never  _did_  go away.

It just got less, got easier to ignore, to distract from. That was the fact of being a demon: they hurt, because they’d been wrenched out of where they were  _supposed_  to be, even when they weren’t really  _wrenched_ , and had more sort of wandered in a vague direction, not really realising the destination until they were there, and the door had closed heavily behind them.

In The Beginning, though, the moment he’d realized, he’d landed hard on his belly in cold grass, on Earth, and the sun wasn’t up. He’d been so cold he’d  _shivered_ , and he’d stared down at hands, and legs, and a  _body_ , and it had felt odd and wrong, because he’d never had a body before, had never even begun the application process—

And yet a body he had.

A cold body. One that ached. One that was missing something.

He thought it was the night time, what they called the darkness, but it wasn’t that: even when the sun rose, and warmed his naked skin, he still felt cold on the inside. Cold, and empty, and brittle, like any sudden thing might break him quite apart.

“Oh, you poor thing,” said a voice behind him, wretched with sympathy and ringing with celestial weight, and he’d turned to look at him: one of the Principalities. In that moment, Crowley remembered, he hadn’t known what his name had been, but he’d remembered that he’d been a higher rank than that, had been higher than the Principalities,  _remembered_ … And yet now, there was nothing. He didn’t remember, anymore. It was such a long time ago, and outside time, which made it even longer, as much as it was closer. In that moment, outside Eden, he had looked more like an angel was supposed to, with dark skin glossy with a golden undertone, with beautiful hair. He hadn’t been like he was now: he’d been  _beautiful_ , and more than that, he’d been  _handsome_.

“Poor…?” Crowley had repeated[2], his tongue dry in his mouth. It had tasted like blood, although he wouldn’t know that until he tasted real blood, and choked on it.

“You’ve Fallen,” the angel had said softly, like it was a soft reminder of something that Crowley had perhaps forgotten, and Crowley had glanced at the flaming sword held loosely in his hand, and flinched away when the sight of the holy fire burned his eyes.

“But,” Crowley had said, and the word had felt bitter on his tongue. He’d never had a tongue before. He’d never spoken  _words_ before. His breath hitching, he had taken a step forward, and the Principality had reached out, and touched his shoulder with his free hand. The touch had been agonising, had sent a desperate ache that suffused his  _bones_ beneath his skin, but for just a scant second, an aching moment, Crowley had felt close to completion again.

“I’m sorry,” the Principality had whispered, and even the  _words_  had stung, dripping over his naked flesh like holy water, his palm rough and warm upon Crowley’s shoulder. The pain… It had rocked his body, had burned deeply beneath his skin, but if the angel had let him, Crowley would have stood there forever, until time ended and then began again, because it was better than the  _other_  pain, the  _lonely_ pain, the pain of incompletion.

The thing about angels and demons, you see, was that they were mostly made up of the same parts, the same essential factors. They were, for want of a better word,  _biologically_  of the same make-up. Their powers came from the same ineffable sources[3], and the line between the occult and the ethereal was not so defined and so complete as one might think[4].

One thing, and one thing only, separated the average angel from the average demon.

Angels were part of the Host: an angel was not an individual, but a member of a machine, of a unit, ever connected by lines of Grace. Angels were a  _group_ , together: separated into orders and organisations, but all part of one great, heavenly army. There was no such thing as a lonely angel, for by definition, they could not be alone: by definition, they could not be  _individual_.

Demons, on the other hand, were at their core, individuals.

Oh, there were  _ranks_ , and there were  _orders_ , but demons, if we misuse the word “biologically” once again, were biologically separate from one another. They were  _alone_ , although they wouldn’t admit to being  _lonely_ , and that was the end of it.

It hurt.

It hurt.

But demons had a funny idea of pain anyway.

“ _You_ ,” had hissed a voice behind him, and Crowley had turned away from the angel, made a pathetic noise as the Principality’s fingers had come away from shoulder. He had felt like he’d been drenched in freezing water, even as he’d taken reluctant, stumbling steps toward the voice,  _His_  voice, the voice he hadn’t heard since—

Well.

As we have said, time was difficult when time didn’t strictly exist, but he hadn’t heard that voice since before Before began: since before the first Fall.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Eden hadn’t been so bad. He’d loved it, actually, loved how fresh everything smelled, loved the beautiful plants, the flowers, the green, verdant leaves everywhere… He missed the days when trees grew that tall, when leaves were that heavy, when fruit grew that ripe, and never spoiled.

 He’d been punished, for tempting Eve, been thrown onto the ground to crawl on his belly, to be a creeping, crawling thing upon the Earth. He remembered the flashbang of it, the sudden white heat burning his eyes and his skin, and then hitting the ground hard, chest first, hissing…

These days, he looked more like a young attorney than an actual snake, but these things were all the same, in the scheme of things.

And still…

He’d been drawn to Aziraphale, even then. The only angel that would look at him, and show  _sympathy_ , and be—

He’d always been a bit of a bastard, Crowley thought, and not in the cold way that the angels were, but in the soft-hearted way a real  _person_  was, soft and warm and full of mercy, and equally full of duty and holy fire.

It had never felt like a contradiction, somehow.

But Aziraphale would stand beside him, and he wouldn’t cringe away, and for moments, Crowley could bask in his Grace, in the angelic warmth of Aziraphale’s influence. Oh, it hurt, yes, it hurt like anyone’s business, but—

Demons had a funny idea of pain anyway.

When you hurt all the time, when agony was your foundation, it never felt like all that much, to add a little more to the pile. Not when it came with the impossible  _rightness_ , of feeling a little closer to whole, once again.

Crowley didn’t remember what it was like, to be part of the Host.

But he felt the  _loss_ , and when he was with Aziraphale, that loss was eclipsed, just enough, that he felt he could remember what it was like, before. He couldn’t, of course. He never remembered it, really, but he could make believe that he could remember it.

Before.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

It was almost—

He was almost—

Things were almost—

Almost, almost, almost.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

It was  _almost_  the apocalypse.

Crowley felt Aziraphale’s hand tight in his own, felt his soft, plump palm pressed tight to Crowley’s, felt their fingers intertwined. His body felt more full of fear than it ever had, even when he’d turned to face Him the first time, but with Aziraphale’s hand in his own—

He was  _almost_  whole.

He felt Aziraphale’s Grace against his own unholy energy, filling his body with unquestionable, indefinable, ineffable warmth, and in that moment, he was the closest to whole he’d ever been, likely that he’d  _ever_  be again. Aziraphale squeezed, and Crowley looked forward. It had been utter agony, pain no mortal could conceive of, and he could have happily drowned in it.

Things were almost as they should have been. Things were almost  _over_ : things were almost  _begun_. Things were  _almost_ , is what they were, closer to almost than they’d ever been, and yet still not quite overstepping almost.

Almost, almost, almost.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

And then it was over, and they were all most relieved to find that it wasn’t really Over.

For a few days, things were in limbo. The world existed in curious harmony, which is to say that harmony and discord existed side-by-side, because that’s what true harmony must  _mean_ , when discord is still in the world. Bad things happened: good things happened. Things, in short, happened.

Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley were exactly in their respective office’s good books, but nor were they in their bad books either[5]. They had always been treated, respectively, in a vaguely hands-off way, because it was known that they each had more of a connection with the  _humans_  than either side thought was proper, and no one wanted to deal with it.

So, if anything, they were treated in an even more hands-off way than before.

Until…

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Aziraphale was lonely.

Angels were not supposed to be lonely, and yet lonely he was. He had felt lonely almost since he could remember: even when he was new and amidst his brothers[6] in the Host, amidst the other Principalities, with angels beneath him, he had felt subtly lonely. He had worried, once upon a time, that he would Fall, and perhaps it was that worry that saved him: ever-worried, ever-uncertain, he never spoke without giving it a careful thought first.

The fact was that  _appearances_  of virtue meant as much to Heaven as virtue itself.

He had always been subtly off, however: he thought too much about the orders he received, worried too much,  _questioned_  too much. Angels were not meant to ask questions, were not meant to even conceive of questions: they were made to do their duties, and to obey, and while Aziraphale tried his best to be obedient, he questioned, too.

And no one ever  _said_  anything.

No, they were far too polite to do  _that_ , and he never did anything obnoxiously wrong, except for that business with the sword, and even then, that had come from a place of love, and mercy, and so it had been alright, but—

But another angel wouldn’t have done it.

He knew that, of course.

He tried not to think too much about it, but he did  _know_ , and he knew the other angels didn’t… Angels, at their core, weren’t meant to like or dislike things: they were meant to love everything, unconditionally, but in a sort of cold, distant way, in the same way that one might diligently take care of one’s cousin’s ant farm, and keep careful track of its progress, but not ever,  _ever_  want the glass broken. They  _loved_  Aziraphale, and they weren’t meant to be capable of like or dislike, but, Aziraphale was grimly certain, none of them  _liked_  him.

In fact, they  _dis_ liked him.

This was part of the reason he spent such time on Earth, and why none of the other angels ever made the effort of getting him to come up to Heaven[7]. He made his reports with regularity[8], and he was mostly left on his own, to do good deeds where he could, and minor miracles, and they left him to it.

But he was  _lonely_.

Being amongst the Host had always felt uncomfortable, because he’d known they hadn’t liked him, because he’d known he didn’t quite fit, and yet being down on Earth was scarcely better. He always felt slightly separated, lonesome, apart…

Crowley helped, of course. Crowley, with all his demonic tendencies, with all his sarcasm, with all his  _irritation_ , still treated him better than the other angels did, and was, Aziraphale suspected, a good deal kinder.

But then, that sort of thought—

“Ah!” Aziraphale yelped, and the other angels looked at him impassively.

The shop was bright with warm light that didn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular, and it was effervescent, the walls bathed in golden warmth, the gilt on many of his books shining and shimmering in its splendour. All of the dust in the shop seemed to have burnt quite away, and it smelled fresh and slightly sweet, like morning dew on fields of flowers.

It made Aziraphale feel slightly dizzy, and he sneezed.

There were four angels in the room, and Aziraphale exhaled softly even as he delicately wiped his nose with a handkerchief. They were dotted about the room: two of them, Gariel and Unael, were leaning back against one of the floor-to-ceiling shelves, their twin vessels in twin poses; Ishnael, an angel in the sultry-eyed body of a young woman, her hair in dark red ringlets about her face, was sitting cross-legged on a table of books.

“Hello, Aziraphale,” said a slow, smooth, melodious voice. Aziraphale looked up at Zadkiel.

“Er,” he said. This was met with an artfully raised eyebrow, and he said, “Hallo. I, I wasn’t expecting anybody. Would anyone like a—”

“We don’t want tea, Aziraphale,” Unael said impatiently, and Aziraphale closed his mouth. He was, of course, not unused to this sort of irritable treatment, but Zadkiel smiled softly, taking a slow step forward.

The vessel suited him very well: his smile was like a knife under moonlight, and Aziraphale exhaled shakily as he felt Zadkiel’s fingers touch against his cheek, felt the pleasant glow of his superior’s beneficence suffusing his Grace. It was beautiful, ineffable, and yet in a way, it felt also…  _invasive_ , as if he was being infringed upon, encroached upon, and his instinct was to drag his body away. Zadkiel knew that, of course: his smile widened, and Aziraphale clenched his teeth. There was a limit to what could be accomplished, in these human forms, but touch—

Touch bridged the gap, allowed energy to flow from one form to the next, and Aziraphale was breathless, relaxing in the pleasant familiarity of the Host. Zadkiel was…  _Dangerous._  Aziraphale knew that: he was the archangel in charge of the Dominions, and these three were each Dominions, were each…

The Dominions.

They encompassed  _justice_ , and Aziraphale was afraid.

“You needn’t be,” Zadkiel said softly, and he leaned in closer, so close that his nose – handsome and well-hewn on a face like a statue – almost brushed against Aziraphale’s. “You needn’t be afraid, Aziraphale.”

“Are you—” Aziraphale’s mouth was dry, and hoarse. “Are you quite sure you wouldn’t, ah, like a cup of…?”

“Please,” Zadkiel said softly. “Just milk, no sugar.”

Grateful, and desperate to break away, Aziraphale stumbled back from the shop and into his little office in the back, pouring water into the kettle and flicking it on. He did not notice (he never did) that it was not plugged in. It began to boil anyway. He was aware, as he stared at the kettle, willing it to boil as slowly as possible, and he tried to think what he’d done. In the past few days, he hadn’t done  _anything_ , had not done even any minor miracles, except fixing a few broken street lamps in Soho, and fixing a girl’s carton of eggs when she’d dropped her groceries, and—

And maybe a few other things.

But nothing  _big_ , and he didn’t do anything for  _Crowley’s_  side, so there was absolutely nothing, nothing that—

That would call for justice.

He poured a little milk into the tea after he makes it, and he brought it into the other room. Unael and Gariel were still leaning against the bookshelf: Ishnael was still sitting cross-legged, Aziraphale noted with inescapable disapproval, on the table. It wasn’t meant to be  _sat_  on, but he didn’t dare say that. The glossy covers, newly clean in her presence, gleamed in the light.

“ _Thanks_ , Aziraphale,” Zadkiel said softly, and his fingers brushed Aziraphale’s as he took the mug. It sent an odd burst of warmth up the length of Aziraphale’s arm, and Aziraphale had to restrain himself from shaking it out, like one would after a static shock. “Like I said, you needn’t  _worry_. We’re not here for you.”

“No?” Aziraphale asked. “Oh, but, dear man, I really—”

“No, no,” Zadkiel said airily, gesturing with his hand as he sipped mat his tea. “We’re here for Crowley.”

“Crowley?” Aziraphale echoed. Dread blanketed him like snow, freezing him to his core, and he tensed in his place, feeling he ought rush for the phone, but he couldn’t possibly, couldn’t… There were  _appearances_ , and this was Heaven: Heaven took precedence over the Arrangement, it  _had_  to. “But— But, Zadkiel, Crowley lives—”

“Oh, we know where he  _lives_ ,” Zadkiel said, and his eyes were cold, but his smile was soft and sweet. “He’s on his way.”

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Crowley dreamt.

He had dreams, much of the time – weird and abstract, but fun, or just oddly ordinary. Sometimes, he had nightmares, of Hell, of Lucifer. Once, he’d had a nightmare that Aziraphale had Fallen, and that…

That still haunted him.

This was neither a dream, nor a nightmare, exactly. It was just a memory, and he forgot it like you forgot a dream, seeming to drain out of his head like water through a sieve when he raised his head off the pillow. He caught just a vague, distant strand of memory, of the Host around him, of heavenly voices raised in song, of a feeling of  _completion_ —

And there he was, in his bed, in his black silk pyjamas, incomplete, not whole, and aching in a distant, familiar way. Sighing, he drew himself from bed, and as he moved toward the kitchen to flick the kettle on, he noted the blinking light on his ansaphone, and pressed play.

“ _Crowley, dear boy,”_  came Aziraphale’s voice. It sounded slightly off, slightly wooden, but then, that was hardly surprising: he was often about using the phone at the best of times, and he still didn’t get the point of an answering machine, Crowley was certain.  _“Come by the shop today, would you? Bring a picnic blanket, if you could. Goodbye!”_

The machine clicked off.

Crowley frowned at it.

It was, he mused, the most organised thing Aziraphale had ever said to him. Even his  _letters_ , back when letters were a way in which they communicated with one another, rambled and went on for page after page. This, a curt, simple message, unharried but brief, was  _very_  unlike him.

“Probably read a manual on answering machine messages,” Crowley muttered to himself, and he walked back into the bedroom, snapping himself into an outfit. No suit, today – he was still taking advantage of his days off, and he wore a pair of tight jeans and a similarly tight black shirt, a loose red scarf tied around his neck. He liked to dress like this around the angel – he was always scandalised if he saw Crowley in less than three layers, let alone  _one_.

He rummaged in the back of one of the sleek, mirrored closets built into the wall of his bedroom, drawing out the picnic basket they’d bought in… What year  _was_  it? Crowley couldn’t remember, although he was aware Aziraphale probably did – he likely still had the receipt. It was a nice wicker basket, with a tea set painted with images of Eden. Crowley had thought it very funny, when they’d bought it, although if Aziraphale had only mentioned a picnic blanket, he likely didn’t necessarily mean the whole  _set_ , but he’d pop it on the backseat nonetheless.

They hadn’t had a picnic in a  _long_  time, he didn’t think. Not since the 1980s, at least.

Crowley smiled as he descended the stairs and got into the car, dropping the basket on the seat behind him. Yeah.  _Yeah_. A picnic.

He would have ended up at Aziraphale’s today anyway. He always did, after dreaming of Heaven. He needed it. It was—

The thing was, right, that demons weren’t supposed to  _want_  love. It was anathema to the demonic identity, was love: most of the demons rebelled from Heaven because it got too much for them, all that love, when they wanted to feel other things, when they were desperate to be angry, to hate, to spit, to bite.

Crowley had always waited to start feeling that way, but it had never come. Love was…  _nice_. He loved things, he thought, although maybe he didn’t love them like humans did, like they were supposed to: he loved his car, his plants, his life on Earth. He loved James Bond. He loved, he thought – although he would never admit to it, lest the angel get some stupid ideas in his head – Aziraphale. Aziraphale, he  _cared_ about, and enough so that “love” would probably be the right word, if he was the sort to go about ascribing words to his feelings, which he wasn’t. He didn’t much like admitting to feelings at all, if it came down to it.

And it felt  _uncomfortable_ , just thinking about it.

This was the sort of thing that could land one a  _commendation **[9]**_ , thinking about love, as a demon,  _wanting_  love,  _feeling_  love—

He stopped the car, and a double yellow line jumped so hurriedly out of its way that it wound itself around a nearby lamp post, making it look as if it had been wrapped in yellow ribbon for a holiday. Crowley ignored it, dragged the picnic blanket out of the basket[10] and folding it under his arm.

When he walked into the shop, his sunglasses loosely settled on his nose, the bell tinkled above his head, but it sounded slightly off, as if he were hearing it ring underwater. He stopped, leaning back on his heels and frowning as he looked up at it, and then white, burning light drowned his vision.

He hit the ground chest first, hissing in pain, and felt his head loll as unconsciousness hit him all at once.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

“Oh!” Aziraphale said in wordless protest, but Gariel and Unael ignored him, dragging Crowley up from the ground, each with a burly, broad hand under one of Crowley’s arms. Crowley was tall, but not  _very_ tall, and they towered over him on each side, the two of them big and broad where Crowley kept a sort of lightly athletic build, like one of a swimmer, or a gymnast. It was the easiest to hold, he had said to Aziraphale once, given that his  _natural_  form was something more serpentine.

He couldn’t help the desperate, crawling uncertainty in his chest as he watched Ishnael snap her fingers[11], and he felt the heavenly  _oomph_  as the table and the books were transported in the backroom instead of out here. They were moving about so quickly, all four of them, moving things out of the way, and Zadkiel had put the door to  _CLOSED_ , had locked it behind him, and was now holding what Crowley had dropped.

“What— Oh, that’s…” He stopped as he felt Zadkiel’s amused gaze alight on his face. “What are you going to do to him?” Aziraphale asked, and he heard the tension in his voice, although he tried to force anyway any emotion. He wasn’t  _supposed_  to feel emotion: it was only Crowley. He was only a demon.

Only…

“Punish him,” Zadkiel said softly. “For his…  _unfortunate_  role, in the subversion of the apocalypse. The Metatron insisted.”

“Did they?” Aziraphale asked, slightly breathlessly. He felt very light-headed once again, and he sat back on the edge of his desk, which had been cleared of its usual piles of books. The wood grain had been polished to a shine, but Aziraphale scarcely noticed it, watching powerlessly as Zadkiel threw out the picnic blanket. It was the red one, the one they’d bought in Blandford Forum in ‘07, when they’d bought that awful picnic set. Aziraphale remembered it very well: it had been the first outing they’d actually had together since Crowley had slept for a good  _eighty years_ , and they’d made a joint mess of the village fete after they’d picnicked together on the green. Why had he brought it? How had they known he was…? “Will I—”

“Oh, no,” Zadkiel said, and he watched, sipping at his tea, as Unael and Gariel dragged Crowley onto the blanket, on his knees. Unconscious and limp, his body fell loosely against Gariel’s leg, with Gariel maintaining a tight grip on the back of his shirt as Ishnael leaned in and dragged the scarf from around his neck. He was scarcely dressed, Aziraphale noticed, in one of his  _t-shirts_ , and in those awful scraps of black denim that could barely even be called “jeans”, with how “distressed” they looked. Why a garment should want to look distressed, upset, or even mildly alarmed, Aziraphale had no idea whatsoever.

The snakeskin shoes, as ever, remained.

“No,” Zadkiel said musingly, “no, we wouldn’t punish  _you_ , Aziraphale. The Metatron has express orders not to.”

“From whom?” There was a moment’s pause, and Aziraphale was struck with strange and abrupt understanding. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved, or frightened. It was… It was something, he felt, to be given that word of protection, but why should he be protected, and not Crowley? It was so  _unfair_ , when they did the same things, when Crowley wouldn’t have done half of what he did, were it not for Aziraphale… He swallowed.

“I used your voice on his telephone,” Ishnael said smugly, and Aziraphale looked at her.

“Now,” Aziraphale said. “That’s not really cricket, is it? You can’t— You can’t  _lie_.”

“I didn’t lie,” Ishnael said, shrugging her shoulders delicately. “It was him that chose to  _trust_  it. He ought have known better. You  _are_  his Enemy after all. Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, bristling, and he looked down at Crowley, at his slack jaw, his lolling head. He looked so… so  _vulnerable_ , like this. “What are you going to do to him?”

“You needn’t be here,” Zadkiel said quietly. “We know you don’t really have the…” He coughed, delicately, politely, and it felt like a cut. “We know you don’t really have the  _stomach_  for justice, Aziraphale. You never have.”

“I’m not squeamish,” Aziraphale said. “And this is… If you’re going to do it in my shop, I can’t— I do think I ought be here.” They’re going to torture him.  _Torture_  him. There was no way out, Aziraphale was horribly aware, no way of getting Crowley out of here, and it made him  _ache_ , the idea of seeing Crowley in pain, seeing him  _tortured_. It didn’t seem very celestial to him, not at all, to torture even the worst of their enemies, and Crowley wasn’t so bad, in the scheme of things.

In many ways, he wasn’t bad at all. He could hardly  _leave_  him, could he? No. No, he couldn’t.

Zadkiel shrugged, and he handed the mug to Aziraphale, now empty. It was a dismissive gesture, and Aziraphale felt shame drip down the back of his neck even as he banished the mug to his sink, not turning away. He sat down behind his desk, clenching his hands tightly into fists, where they couldn’t see his perfectly-manicured fingernails press tight against his palms.

“ _Crowley_ ,” Zadkiel said softly, coaxingly, and Aziraphale wondered what they would do. Flay the skin from his body? Burn him with holy fire? Every idea that came to him seemed quite gory, but not especially celestial, and Aziraphale watched, powerless, as Zadkiel dropped into a crouch before Crowley. His voice was soft, mellifluous, and bright with cheer, and it made Aziraphale’s spine feel like jelly: “ _Crowley_? Wake up, Crowley: rise and shine and smell the holy oil!”

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Crowley groaned. He felt dizzy, and he hissed out a noise as his sunglasses were drawn away from his eyes by a gentle touch. He was on his knees, being held up by a grip on the back of his shirt, and he exhaled hard, blinking several times as he tried to bring himself back to wakefulness.

“Did you knock me  _out_?” he demanded, and it was only after he finished the question that he realized he was looking not at the homely, red-faced, but comforting features of Aziraphale, but instead at a very handsome face, blue-eyed and ivory-pale, with dark blond hair combed back from the face with Brylcreem. The holy energy came off him in waves, and Crowley smiled, but the smile was full of terror, and he tried not to let it show[12]. “Didn’t know Hitler Youth was the new fashion for the Host,” he said.

The angel smiled, his eyes very cold, and Crowley tried to scramble away, but the grip on the back of his shirt was tight, and as soon as he tried to struggle, an impossible, ethereal weight settled on his shoulders, all but pinning him down onto his and Aziraphale’s own picnic blanket.

“Hello, Crowley,” the angel said softly. “My name is Zadkiel.”

“Nice to meet you,” Crowley said, his gaze flitting to the two big angels either side of him – they were Dominions too, but they didn’t feel like  _Zadkiel_  did. Zadkiel, he was an archangel, and no mistake, no mistake at all. Crowley remembered, distantly, that Aziraphale had mentioned him before – he’d stepped in with that whole nasty business with Abraham and Isaac, and Crowley didn’t want to be here  _at all_. “Let me go?”

“Oh, no,” Zadkiel said apologetically, reaching forward and absently plucking a piece of lint Crowley was fairly certain wasn’t there from his t-shirt. “No, I don’t think so.” Crowley was breathing very heavily. It didn’t do much to help him, but it felt like the sort of thing he ought be doing in this situation, and while it didn’t make him feel any better whatsoever, it was a good accessory for his outfit of “absolute terror”. “You see, Crowley, we’re here to punish you.”

“Can’t really punish a demon,” Crowley said desperately. It was a lie, of course. Demons still felt pain, and there were certainly things that could hurt a demonic body, especially in a humanish form like this one: holy water, holy fire,  _certainly_  holy touch from holy bodies, especially if they decided to dig under the skin, and he was stiff in his place, now and then still trying to lunge away from the grip on his shirt, and finding his attempt unsuccessful. “A little bit inured to the old  _fire and brimstone_ tricks.”

To his mounting horror, the angel Zadkiel beamed. His bright blue eyes seemed to be lit by an internal fire, but they still looked impossibly cold. “You know,” he said softly, in a conspiratorial tone, “I think you’re quite right. You see, Crowley… Do you prefer Crowley? I can call you Anthony, if you like.”

“Don’t care.”

“Oh? You had another name, once upon a time, didn’t you?” Zadkiel asked softly, leaning in closer, and it was only now that Crowley saw over his shoulder, to Aziraphale, sat at his desk. He was chalky-pale, and he looked as if he might be sick. He wasn’t involved in this, Crowley didn’t think – it wasn’t really Aziraphale’s style. If he’d known, he would have gotten Crowley out.

Wouldn’t he?

For a second, for a  _second_ , Crowley doubted, and it was that moment Zadkiel chose to cup his cheek.

“ _Ah_ ,” Crowley moaned, trying to lean back and away from the touch, but Zadkiel’s fingers lingered against his skin, and it hurt, oh, it hurt, it  _hurt_. It was so much more than Aziraphale’s touch – Zadkiel was several ranks up the celestial register, and the  _archangel_  that commanded the Dominions, and his Grace… It was like a lightning strike hitting a dry tree in an olive grove, and Crowley was  _alight_  with it, his flesh burning, but still, but  _still_ , his body ached for more, for that blessed link back to the Host. He felt  _connection_ , felt all-encompassing love, felt like he’d drown in it, and he couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand it, because—

Zadkiel pulled his hand away, and Crowley let out a cry of mingled relief and loss.

“Yes,” Zadkiel murmured sweetly. “Yes, I thought that would work. You see, Crowley – do let me know if you want me to call you something else – demons are  _used_  to pain. But, why, angelic adoration… That’s something quite foreign, isn’t it? I know Aziraphale is  _merciful_  with you, but we’ll show you mercy you never  _dreamed_  of. We’ll show you  _benediction_ , Crowley.”

“No,” Crowley said, and he heard his voice crack in the middle. “Ssss _top_  it, no, no, let me go, let me—”

Zadkiel’s hands cupped his cheeks tenderly even as Crowley struggled against the magic holding him down, but then Zadkiel’s mouth was on his, and his screams were muffled against the angel’s soft lips.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Crowley was screaming, and Aziraphale was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, but what could he do? Nothing.  _Nothing_. He stared, horrified, at the way Crowley struggled in Zadkiel’s deceptively gentle grasp, his hands pawing uselessly at the angel’s sky-blue jumper, unable to push him off.

“Oh, no, Zadkiel,” Aziraphale protested, but Zadkiel ignored him, and Aziraphale watched, powerless, as he gently stroked over the side of Crowley’s throat. It was a nice throat, Aziraphale had always thought – back in the early 20th century, he had been complimented on it quite often, particularly when he had visited Aziraphale in the Hyacinth and Vine[13]. Now, it twitched and shuddered under Zadkiel’s touch. “That’s— That’s  _too_  cruel—”

“But he’s a  _demon_ , Aziraphale,” Zadkiel replied, and he gazed lovingly into Crowley’s eyes, ignoring the way the demon tried to lean back on his heels and away from him. “The only mercy I will show him is in the  _mercy_  I will show him. Did you ever hear the human phrase,  _Kill them with kindness?_ ”

“Don’t,” Crowley said, and his voice was so desperate that Aziraphale felt faint. “Don’t, don’t, don’t jussst— Jussst  _dissssscorporate_  me, send me downsssstairs, let  _my_  ssside deal with me, you don’t want—"

“Oh, but,  _Crowley_ ,” Zadkiel said. “This is about what  _you_  want.” Aziraphale had never seen Crowley’s eyes so wide, nor his pupils so desperately dilated. He looked terrified. “Do you remember Heaven?”

“No.”

“Oh,  _Crowley_ ,” Zadkiel purred, sing-song. “To lie is a sin, you know. I’ll forgive it, this time.” And then he kissed Crowley again, their mouths pressing softly together. This time, Crowley didn’t scream: he whimpered softly, and Aziraphale felt sick as he saw Crowley lean  _into_  it, his fingers loosely fisting in Zadkiel’s shirt-front. “ _There_ ,” Zadkiel whispered against his mouth, stroking through Crowley’s hair. “That’s it.”

“I can give you,” Crowley said, “ _information_ , I can… Don’t kisssss me, I can—”

“Oh, but, Crowley,” Zadkiel said, “don’t you understand? This isn’t about  _information_. This is about justice: this is divine mercy, my friend.”

“I don’t want—”

“Oh, don’t lie, Crowley. Besides, it isn’t just about  _wanting_ ,” Zadkiel interrupted him smoothly, and Aziraphale watched as Ishnael came forward, drawing a silver blade up and through Crowley’s shirt. It was some ethereal steel, and it cut through Crowley’s shirt as smoothly as through air, swiftly dragged away from his chest. “It’s about what you  _deserve_ , isn’t it? Your holy punishment for your part in the apocalypse: your holy reward.”

Crowley shuddered in dread, and he shook his head even as Ishnael dragged her blade down the side of his jeans, cutting them away too.

“You’ll Fall,” he said, desperately. It occurred to Aziraphale that this was an odd thing for him to say. It didn’t seem like a threat, not to him, didn’t seem like Crowley was trying to  _convince_  them. It sounded like… It sounded like a warning.

Zadkiel laughed. “Oh, no, Crowley, no, we won’t. It hurts you, doesn’t it? When I touch you? But does it  _only_  hurt?” His lips brushed Crowley’s again, and Aziraphale…

Had it always hurt him, he wondered? How many times had he touched Crowley, thoughtlessly, throughout the centuries, how many times had he stroked his hair, patted his shoulder, hugged him, shook his hand, kissed his cheeks—

All those greetings, all so  _valid_  for their times and places, and yet, had they hurt him? Had he been biting back desperate noises of pain like these ones, all for the sake of the Arrangement? The idea sickened him, but no, no, it  _couldn’t_  hurt him, not like this. He would have said. He would have, wouldn’t he?

The doubt cleaved him in two.

“Feels…” Crowley said, and he shuddered, shaking his head as Ishnael drew off his shoes, leaving him in his bare feet. He was entirely naked, now, and Aziraphale remembered the first time, the  _very_  first time, when he’d only just Fallen, and not even  _realized_ … “Let me go. This is revelling in the pain of somebody else, you can’t  _do_  this, you can’t—”

“Revelry?” Zadkiel repeated, and his fingers traced a line down Crowley’s sternum, down his belly, and Aziraphale had to flinch, had to look away from the way Crowley’s stomach jumped under the touch, even as he leaned into it, desperately. “There’s no  _revelry_  here, Crowley. This is duty, nothing more. Gariel, Unael, help me, will you?”

As Gariel and Unael began to untie their ties and remove their shirts, Aziraphale watched Ishnael tie Crowley’s hands behind him, using his own scarf to put his wrists against his lower back. Angels were sexless, unless they really made the effort, but Crowley had settled on one  _design_  for his genitalia back in 1812, Aziraphale distantly recalled. He’d modelled for a man, a painter, and he’d been so  _pleased_ with himself, had held up the portrait and insisted he was going to keep them just like this, forever, because he liked the way the light caught them, and Aziraphale had laughed at him, and called him wicked and vain and  _stupid_ , and Crowley had winked at him, and it had been… He ought feel more conflicted, he thought, but it had been a moment of such easy joy, the both of them laughing, and it hadn’t  _felt_ sinful, but for the vanity of it, and the vanity was no different that Crowley fussing over his hair, or his clothes[14].

Angels weren’t sexual beings, and as for demons… They could be. Aziraphale had seen lusty demons about, had seen succubae, but Crowley so rarely bothered with that sort of thing, except for the occasional seduction – he preferred to let them get themselves together, rather than stepping in himself. Crowley’s artistic preferences were just that:  _artistic_.

He thought about saying this, trying to convince them that it wasn’t  _right_ , to try to punish him with sex, when he didn’t even—

But it wasn’t the sex, of course.

He could see that, see that in the tender way Zadkiel’s fingers[15] played over Crowley’s naked hip, over his thigh, that this wasn’t about sex. This was about  _tenderness_ , about the parody of love these angels could foist on a desperate demon, about drowning him in the divine adoration of the Host and watching it  _burn_  him.

“Zadkiel,” he said, doing his best to be stern, “I  _really_  think—”

“Aziraphale,” Zadkiel said, and his voice was hard as steel. “I  _told_  you, I don’t  _care_  if you’re squeamish. Watch if you want to, but  _hush_.”

Aziraphale met Crowley’s gaze. His eyes were full of one emotion, and one emotion only: resignation. Aziraphale swallowed, and he opened his mouth again, but before he could speak, Zadkiel was pressing a kiss to Crowley’s mouth again, even as Unael and Gariel leaned in, stroking their hands over Crowley’s body, through his hair, and Crowley gasped and shuddered in his place.

This wasn’t ineffable.

This was  _anything_  but ineffable, but what could Aziraphale do? He couldn’t fight them off, he knew, and calling for help… If the Metatron had allowed for this, then it was impossible to argue, to go against, and they didn’t  _care_  what he thought, didn’t care—

Crowley heaved in a gasp, and Zadkiel said, “Do you remember Heaven? I expect you do, in moments like these. All of us touching you…”

“Remindsss me,” Crowley said weakly, “why I Fell.” And then he laughed, madly, and the laughter broke off into a heady moan as Zadkiel dragged his mouth over the side of his neck. Ishanel’s hands were buried in Crowley’s hair, and he was forced to lean against Unael’s side to keep from falling; Gariel’s hands were dragging over his thighs, one way and the other, and he wouldn’t stop  _trembling_.

Aziraphale had never seen him tremble like that, and it made him  _ache_.

Angels weren’t mean to feel like this: they loved everything, yes, but in a distant way, and this was anything but distant.

Aziraphale felt he would die, just watching, if he  _could_  die, of course.

He couldn’t.

He knew that.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

It wasn’t Hell.

If Crowley could call it Hell, it would be bearable.

It wasn’t Hell.

It was ecstasy, and he was drowning in it.

 

[1] The Beginning, of course, being noticeably different from  _the beginning_.

[2] Although it hadn’t been Crowley, then.  _Crowley_  was a bastardisation of what had yet to become his name,  _Crawly_ , but even the latter was nothing but an epithet, something they came up with to separate him from the other demons. He hadn’t been able to remember the name he’d had once, as part of the Host. Perhaps that was for the best.

[3] Although the receipts and invoices are made by very different offices.

[4] Or, for that matter, hope.

[5] This is partly because neither Heaven nor Hell keep “good” books or “bad” books. Both have a very different definition of the terms, and ambiguities abound.

[6] This ought not be taken as a description of the genders of anyone involved, as angels are genderless.

[7] We often say “up to” or “down to” when in reference to Heaven or Hell, but these are merely vague frames of reference, owing to the fact that we can’t truly define the direction of the dimensional shift necessary to move from mode of existence to the other. Were we to do so, however, and be completely accurate, we might say that Heaven was three-quarters to the North-left-lengthways of  _that_  way, and yes, slightly up. Hell, on the other hand, was the opposite of that direction, but backwards, and ideally, at speed.

[8] About every ten to fifteen years was ordinarily sufficient.

[9] Hell had very different ideas of good and bad, as we have noted, and a “commendation” was very much a black mark upon one’s record. Er. Or a…  _white_  mark? It was a bad thing (although, to the demons, it was a  _good_  thing, AKA a bad thing… you get the idea.)

[10] It was a deep, luxurious red, without any  _hint_  of tartan.

[11] They were very badly-kept fingers, Aziraphale noted, with cracks and splits in some of the nails, and with uneven finish to their edges, as if she’d just picked at the end of her nails instead of clipping them properly. This was the sort of thing Aziraphale didn’t hold with, particularly from other angels.

[12] It showed very, very obviously.

[13] This was a discreet gentlemen’s club that Aziraphale had begun to frequent around 1870, and where he had learned to gavotte. He had always found a distinct comfort around, ahem, those sorts of men, and they were ordinarily quite understanding on the subject of celibacy, although that has begun to change in recent years.

[14] In truth, Aziraphale fussed over his own hair, clothes, and especially his fingernails,  _far_  more than Crowley did, but convincing him of this was a Sisyphean task.

[15]  _His_  fingernails, Aziraphale noted with a sinking feeling, were perfectly manicured, and buffed to a shine.


	2. Heaven

He was embroiled in the light of  _Heaven_ , of all that was Good and Holy and Divine, and it felt like it was creeping beneath his flesh and making his bones  _hot_. He felt like all of it – the blood, the skin, everything – would boil right off the bones, and he couldn’t help the ragged noises he was making as he writhed between the angels touching him. Every touch was ecstasy: every touch was torment.

And this, Crowley knew, with desperation that went nowhere and was good for nothing, was only the beginning.

Zadkiel kissed him more deeply, and Crowley was weak. He had never been all that much of a hedonist, in the scheme of things. He liked new experiences, and he liked to  _try_  things, but gluttony was never a sin he’d entirely got the hang of indulging. Ironically, it was  _Aziraphale_  that was better at that than him, but not about sex, not about physical pleasure – just about nice fabrics, and food. They’d never been interested in sex,  _neither_  of them, unless Aziraphale had kept it secret for some reason, and with some miraculous power[1], but this?

This wasn’t about sex.

This was about  _touch_ , and intimacy, and connection. It was all the things a demon should shy away from, that a demon should struggle away from the entire time, and Crowley was torn between struggling and embracing it.

Zadkiel’s tongue was warm against his own, warm and wet and skilful: it crackled with electricity, and Crowley felt his mouth must be steaming as he kissed him back, whimpering when the angel drew away.

Ishnael’s hands in his hair felt so good he thought he would come right apart: they were massaging through his scalp, and he felt like he was bathed in holy light, felt the warmth pervade his whole body, which was responding, on the most physical level, to the stimulation. His skin was awash in a heady flush, and all of his hairs were standing on end, his arms and thighs rippling with gooseflesh, even as he trembled in his place.

“Do you remember Heaven?” Zadkiel asked again, and he nipped at the side of Crowley’s chin, making him grunt. Gariel’s hands were running back and forth over his spine, and it was doing strange things to Crowley’s libido, making the humanish shape he inhabited jump and grind against nothing at all. Unael was massaging[2] the muscled flesh of his thighs, his fingers digging in for knots Crowley had never known were even  _there_  and soothing them away.

“Are you going to keep assssking me that?” Crowley replied unsteadily, and Zadkiel laughed against his mouth. He felt Gariel lean in, and then a hot, wet stripe was  _licked_  up the length of his spine, and his voice cracked as he screamed: it felt like Gariel was licking his  _soul_ , if it could be called a soul, and Crowley dropped limply against Zadkiel’s front when the angel moved away, his legs shaky.

“Oh, yes,” Zadkiel murmured in his ear, and then kissed the shell of it. It was so tender a touch, so gentle, that Crowley felt his demonic flesh rebel, even as he buried his face in Zadkiel’s neck, smelling a subtle cologne and feeling the divine presence of the angelic Grace beneath his sensible outfit and his skin. “We want to be  _gentle_  with you, Crowley: we want you to remember… We  _miss_  you.”

“Missss me?” Crowley asked, horrified, and then Ishnael dragged his head to the side, and she kissed him too. Their Graces, all four of them, were entwining around him like climbing plants, and he remembered Eden, remembered the beauty of it all, the scent of ozone in the air, the verdant green… He’d preferred that, to Heaven, once he got used to the cold, but how could he? How could he, between all this Grace, feeling at  _home_ , as if all was  _Right_ , as if his essence had been given the missing puzzle piece? Ishanel’s mouth tasted of sunshine and strawberries, sweet and airy, and he gasped against her tongue.

“Oh,  _yes_ ,” Unael said against his shoulder, his breath a hot tingle over sensitive skin. Crowley thought, distantly, that he heard someone gasp, and it wasn’t him, so it must have been Aziraphale. “We  _miss_ you, Crowley— Should we call you Crowley?”

“We could call you by your old name,” Gariel murmured against the back of his neck, and Crowley whimpered as Ishnael dragged her teeth over the side of his ear, her tongue flicking over the earlobe. Zadkiel’s hands were on his chest, tracing the lines of muscle there, the pectorals, the nipples, down the smooth expanse of his abdomen and feeling the muscle beneath the flesh. He had a navel, even, but only because he liked the look of them, and thought they added a nice bit of symmetry. “Would you like that?”

His old name.

His old…

“I wasssn’t…”

“Oh, you  _were_ ,” Zadkiel purred, and he bit Crowley’s lip. Demons, when they bit your lip[3], did it for the sake of the pain. They liked to draw blood, of course, but they liked the pain – demons didn’t just have sex. They  _fucked_ , rutted, and it was angry and aggressive and hard, frenetic in a way few other activities were, and you couldn’t lie with a demon without coming away with bites and marks and scratches, blood staining your skin, bruises blooming in the wake of too-hard grips and too-tight grasps. The angels weren’t like that: they were soft, and gentle, and it was everything Crowley had never dared to dream of. “Oh, you knew  _Justice_ , once upon a time, Crowley: you were one of us. Don’t you remember?”

“Don’t you remember?” Ishnael echoed, her fingers carding through his hair and making his scalp tingle.

“We remember  _you_ ,” Gariel murmured, and his fingers were digging into the muscle of his lower back, dipping down against his buttocks where, he was learning, he carried quite a bit of tension. It felt like hot butter melting under the skin as Gariel massaged the overwrought flesh, ignoring Crowley’s bound hands and just working around them.

“We  _miss_  you, Crowley,” Unael agreed, kissing the side of his arm, and Crowley heaved in a gasp that didn’t seem to make it into his lungs.

Every word rang with Truth, and it made Crowley ache inescapably.

“It’s like missing a part of ourselves,” Zadkiel said against his lips, and his fingers played over Crowley’s throat, over his chest. He was bursting with love, with holy, angelic adoration, and when he closed his eyes, he felt it. He felt the scales heavy, felt his wings spread wide, touching  _other_  wings, felt like he was a part of the Host anew, and these were his  _brothers_ , these were his—

“No,” Crowley moaned.

It wasn’t like Aziraphale. When Aziraphale touched him, it hurt, and it felt safe, but it wasn’t like this. Aziraphale comforted the old wounds, like a hot bath soothes scars, but the Dominions weren’t comforting them: they were ripping those old wounds open again, wider than they’d ever been before.

“ _Yes_ , Crowley,” Zadkiel said patiently, like he was a disobedient pet, and he began to lay gentle kisses on Crowley’s face: on his forehead and his brow, on his closed-shut eyelids, on his cheeks, his nose, his chin, his jaw, his mouth. Every kiss was another little cut, and Crowley wished he would only bleed with it.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

On his knees on their picnic blanket, lolling under all their touches, Crowley’s skin was beginning to glisten with sweat, and Aziraphale stared, unable to tear his gaze away. He felt, somehow, if he only  _watched_ , he might understand it better, and he didn’t want to. Oh, no, he didn’t want to – he wanted to run away, to run upstairs and bury his face beneath the blankets of his mostly unused, but clean and tidy bed, squirrel himself away with some books and hide there until this was all over, hide…

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t leave Crowley alone with them, abandon him to his fate. He had to stay, and keep vigil, so that Crowley wouldn’t be  _alone_. He couldn’t leave Crowley alone, not after all they’d done together.

Even if it sickened him.

 _Especially_ , he thought, because it sickened him.

He didn’t know that Crowley had been a Dominion, before he Fell. He’d never really thought about it, and Crowley had never said. Perhaps he hadn’t remembered, before this moment: perhaps he hadn’t  _wanted_  to remember. Crowley never talked about Heaven, if he could help it, and when he did he always talked about it as if he’d just heard gossip about it. One could easily forget that he’d once been a part of the Host himself – Aziraphale often did.

It meant Crowley  _outranked_  him, by quite a bit, when he was an angel, and he thought that perhaps the thought should feel unjust, or wrong, or unpleasant, but it didn’t really make Aziraphale feel anything. All he felt was wretched sympathy, watching Crowley writhe between those who had once been his brothers, gasping and whimpering, and he wished he could intervene,  _wished_ …

He wished.

“We loved you, Crowley,” Zadkiel murmured as he cupped Crowley’s cheeks, and behind him, Gariel must have done something intimate, because Crowley’s body  _lurched_  up on his knees, and Zadkiel held him close, even as Unael dragged his knees apart. “We  _still_  love you. We love you so,  _so_  much—”

“ _Ssssstop_  it,” Crowley wailed, the sound so pathetic that Aziraphale bit his own lip. He’d lost himself a bit, Aziraphale saw: it showed in his mouth, in the sharpness of his white teeth, in the length and thinness of his tongue.

“Don’t you love  _us_?” Zadkiel asked, and the weight of his faux-hurt rattled off the walls. “Oh, Crowley, let me tell you your name—”

“No, no, no, no, no—”

“Let me kiss you?”

“ _Yessss_ ,” Crowley said, and he kissed Zadkiel once more, kissed him like he was drowning, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but wonder what it must feel like. It didn’t look  _nice_ : it looked dreadful, desperate, and even as he kissed the archangel, Aziraphale could see the tension in Crowley’s body, the instinct to drag away.

Aziraphale and Crowley had kissed before, of course. Expectations of physical affection were changed from one human culture to the next, as era and geography and whatnot changed where the lines were drawn, and they had always feigned to be friends, to the humans around them. They had kissed, and hugged, and wrestled; they had leaned on one another in public, or walked arm-in-arm through the streets together; they had shared beds, back when sharing beds was more  _normal_ , less implicating of a greater intimacy. He liked touching Crowley, liked the way the demon always smiled and leaned into it, or touched him back. It felt  _right_ , when they touched one another, when they were in contact – like the touch Zadkiel had laid on his cheek, but not so aggressive. Aziraphale never felt like Crowley was trying to overpower him, when they were essence to essence: their essences touched one another and existed in harmony, harmony and discord side-by-side. Nowadays, such casual touch between men was always seen as something scandalising, but their touches were chaste, no matter how lascivious Crowley sometimes tried to make them look to passers-by[4]. Aziraphale even felt, in a sort of distant way, that if it  _scandalised_  people, that it was good to do so, to challenge people’s preconceived notions, and their prejudices.

But it was loving: it was  _chaste_. They didn’t touch one another anymore than was appropriate, than was comfortable, and there’d certainly never been any  _lust_  in it, and Aziraphale felt no lust now.

His instinct was not to kiss Crowley, or touch him like these angels were doing: it was to lift him up and to carry him away, to put him to bed and stroke his hair and say he was so, so sorry, that it was going to be alright, and oh, why  _couldn’t_  he do that? Wouldn’t it be the right thing to do? It would go against Heaven, yes, but wouldn’t it be—

Wouldn’t it be right?

This was just so  _cruel_ , beyond the scope of what Heaven could possibly deem acceptable, beyond anything, beyond…

Ishnael and Zadkiel, Aziraphale noticed, were changing places, and he watched, dry-mouthed and horrified, as Zadkiel reached between Crowley’s legs and wrapped his hand around Crowley’s member[5]. Aziraphale recalled, with fondness that tasted bitter in his mouth, Crowley talking about crafting it, and saying he’d “agonised” over whether to have a foreskin or not, and Aziraphale had laughed at him for thinking it mattered so much. He’d been most put out, had insisted that the humans cared a great deal about foreskins, and how they looked, aesthetically, especially when one was posing for a painting.

That felt so far away.

It felt so long ago.

He’d gone with the foreskin, in the end, and Aziraphale watched as Zadkiel gently drew back its hood, his thumb dragging wet over the head, and Crowley was moaning into Ishnael’s mouth as she kissed him softly, tenderly, one hand carded loosely in his hair.

“You’ll Fall,” Crowley said again, raggedly, desperately. It fell on deaf ears. “No… Let me—”

“What if we called you  _Anthony_?” Ishanel asked, stroking under his jaw with gentle fingers, and Crowley, a natural snake, leaned into it without even hesitating. “Seems so much  _nicer_  than that nasty little sobriquet…”

“ _Anthony_ ,” Unael rumbled, laying kisses on the side of Crowley’s belly and his hips, and Crowley moaned again, his hips pressing up and into Zadkiel’s touch, thrusting into his hand. “I like that.  _Anthony_. You know, your real name was—”

“ _No_ ,” Crowley begged, shaking his head. “No, no— Let me, let me…  _Pleasssse_.” Aziraphale felt sick, and he couldn’t hear what Crowley said next, because he mumbled it, whimpered it, in Zadkiel’s ear, but it made Zadkiel laugh.

“Alright, brother,” Zadkiel whispered, and Crowley recoiled as if burned. “If you want.”

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

 _Not_  the name. Not the name, not the name,  _anything_  but the name, because if they gave him the name, Crowley thought, he’d remember, he’d  _really_  remember, and he couldn’t bear the idea, couldn’t bear the idea of  _really_  remembering, because if he did remember… He wouldn’t be able to forget again, and the ache is bad enough when it’s just sensation, but if it was more than that, if he remembered everything—

“It isssn’t worth the  _rissssk_ ,” he mumbled, even as Unael stood on the other side, and he stared up at him, swallowing, as he undid the neat fly of his trousers. They were about two-hundred years out of date, light brown breeches of a coarse-looking cloth, and for a second, there was nothing, before he manifested— “You’re going to Fall,” Crowley repeated, desperately, wishing that they would only  _listen_. But if he did the first—

Casting the first stone, and all that. He didn’t know if that was how it worked. Angels  _could_  have sex, he knew that. They just didn’t, most of the time, like most of them didn’t eat or sleep or drink wine, and they didn’t have  _appetites_  like humans did, but he was fairly certain that this was overstepping the line, that this was too cruel, too invasive, even when done to a demon.

“How could we Fall, Anthony?” Unael asked, his voice a low rumble, and it skittered off the back of Crowley’s skull, threatening to unravel long-lost memories of a celestial voice like distant thunder. “We love you.” The words spattered over his soul like acid, and he wished he could gag.

Crowley winced instead, and he leaned up on his knees, letting Unael guide himself into Crowley’s mouth. He regretted it immediately, and yet, it was exactly the pain he was searching for. His tongue, his palate, broken up with distinctly  _inhuman_  scenting organs, were  _sensitive_ , and his mouth is burning as he closed it around Unael’s—

It was a  _cock,_  was what it was, but it felt  _unholy_ , somehow, to call it that, and he didn’t know why it should matter, but it felt like it should matter, it felt like it mattered. He hollowed his cheeks and  _sucked_ , and immediately groaned in pain, but Unael’s big hand was wrapping through his hair, carding through the thick locks and tightening just enough to give him a whisper of pleasure-pain. His mouth was burning, even as he wrapped his tongue around Unael’s cock, and the hands on the rest of his body just didn’t stop: Gariel was still massaging his back, having moved up to his shoulders, and now Ishnael was stroking his thighs, laying kisses on his belly. He felt his every muscle twitch and jump, as if to be away from her, but if she saw it, she ignored it.

Zadkiel was the worst of them, his hand loosely braced on Crowley’s hip, and he leaned in, not doing  _anything_ , just breathing in Crowley’s ear as Crowley felt the desperate pleasure of all the hands on his skin, the ineffable  _rightness_  of it all, the sense of divine completion; and equally, the agony of their touch, the way his skin was roiling and rebelling like a stormy sea, the cold torment of the cock in his mouth, slowly sliding over his tongue, until his lips were pressed up against the base of it. His jaw was slightly unhinged, and it must look inhuman,  _must do_ , but that doesn’t matter, not right now, not here.

“Does it feel good?” Zadkiel whispered in his ear, his voice like poisoned honey, and Crowley closed his eyes as tightly as he could, tasting Unael on his tongue, felt his scent permeate Crowley’s  _consciousness_. Ozone, like Eden, he remembered, but more than that: the smell of wing oil, dusty and slightly sweet; morning dew on unimaginable flowers, colourful beyond a human’s ability to see; the dusts of deserts long-since lost to Earth, and even to the Firmament—

Crowley moaned, and he didn’t know if it was because of the way that Unael shifted his hips, thrusting just slightly into his throat, or the fact that Ishnael had just dragged a burningly-cold stripe of wetness from the base of his own cock to the tip. He felt so  _cold_ , and so hot, all at once, like he had been thrown into space and left to orbit a star, and Zadkiel chuckles in his ear, kissing the shell of it once more.

“So beautiful, Anthony,” he murmured, and Crowley choked himself, leaned forward suddenly and felt Unael too big in his throat, but Unael grabbed tight at his hair before he could do it again.

“No,  _no_ ,” Unael said warmly in his thunderous voice. Crowley looked to Aziraphale, whose two fists were pressed together, his thumbs tight against his own plump lips, as if to stop himself from crying out. Aziraphale met his gaze, and shame made Crowley close his eyes. “Gently, Anthony. Gently, or I’ll tell you—”

Crowley moaned again, letting his tongue play over Unael’s cockhead, playing around the crown, flicking into the slit, and he heard Unael hum.  _He_  was circumcised: of course he was. The hands on his back were dragging downward, now, back toward his arse, and Gariel’s fingers slipped for a second time into the cleft of his buttocks, rubbing two playful fingers over the muscle there, back and forth. He went right up beneath Crowley’s sac, no doubt brushing Ishnael’s fingers where she rolled his bollocks back and forth in her palm, and then back up—

A demon wouldn’t be like this.

A demon would be fucking him already, brutally, not so softly, not so  _tenderly_ : it would be impatient and it would be hard and it would be rough, and he’d scream where he was pinned down[6], feel himself ripped into and it would be so  _good_ —

This wasn’t good.

This was  _Good_ , and that was so much worse.

When Unael came, it ripped through him like holy fire, and he screamed raggedly as he felt it burn down his throat, felt the desperate  _agony_  of it, like he’d just swallowed a lightning strike: he pulled back coughing, but Zadkiel’s hand was already on his throat, soothing the pain, even as he said, “So  _good_ , Anthony, you’re doing so well for us. We love you, you know, we love you so much: you are of our Father’s creation, and we are of one being, you and I, all of us—”

Crowley heaved in a whimpered noise as he was drawn forward, felt burning, freezing heat encompass him as Ishnael guided him inside her mouth, taking him in entirely now, felt her  _tongue_ —

Gariel’s fingers were wet and slick where they pressed against his entrance, pressing in, and Crowley shuddered at how  _gentle_  he was, at the care he took, at the soft shift of fingers inside him, pressing—

“ _Fuck_ ,” Crowley grunted. He wanted Aziraphale, and the thought sickened him – he didn’t want him like this, no, no, but he wanted to be with Aziraphale, as he had been before, wanted to lay his head on his shoulder and pretend he was drunk, wanted to relax against his body and feel the comforting warmth of his Grace. Comforting, painful, but not overpowering, not like this, not  _agony_ —

“No,” Zadkiel whispered, “ _love_ ,” and Zadkiel kissed him again.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Aziraphale was trying not to tremble as he watched.

Crowley had met his gaze and looked away, because Aziraphale wouldn’t help him, and he  _couldn’t_ , he couldn’t, but what did that matter? Why was he letting that stop him? It hadn’t stopped him at the end of it all, had it? Crowley was more important than that, anyway, more important than—

No.

No, that was blasphemy, and the thought chilled him to his graceless core.

Crowley’s body was soaked with sweat now, glistening in the golden, holy light, and he was trembling, but he was kissing Zadkiel desperately, eagerly. He was doing it, Aziraphale knew with a sickly, desperate certainty, to keep Zadkiel from talking.

Crowley, once a Dominion, and Aziraphale ached to learn his name, felt the curiosity take root in his belly and bloom like a climbing plant, spreading forth and through his consciousness,  _lust_ —

For knowledge.

Gariel did something Aziraphale couldn’t quite see, and Crowley  _keened_ , the sound ripping up choked and broken from his graceful throat: Zadkiel laughed into his mouth, cupping his cheeks, kissing them, kissing his eyelids once again.

“Oh, Anthony,” Zadkiel murmured against his mouth, gripping his cheeks to stop him when Crowley tried to lunge forward, tried to kiss him again. He was shuddering, his hips  _grinding_ , conflicted between Ishnael’s mouth and Gariel’s fingers: Unael was playing over his chest, dragging at his nipples, at his neck, his belly. Aziraphale could see his flesh twitch and shudder. “You were so bright amidst us, and you shone with such beautiful light… We feel the loss of you in our cores, in our very  _hearts_ , brother, we  _miss_  you—”

“No,” Crowley begged, and Aziraphale’s own heart felt like it would break.

“ _Yessss_ ,” Zadkiel said, his tongue momentarily as Crowley’s, flicking over his lip, and the noise Crowley made was indescribable: the shop shook, and Aziraphale scarcely noticed the quake that broke through the room, but Ishnael leaned back on her heels, wiping her mouth and looking satisfied.

“We love you, brother,” Zadkiel purred, and Crowley choked on air as Gariel came closer behind him, gripping at his hips and grinding against him. “We love you, we  _love_  you, and it so aches to have you missing from us. Won’t you remember your name? Won’t you let us tell you?”

Crowley was gasping, whimpering constantly, now, and his yellow eyes, their pupils black slits, were shining. He looked to Aziraphale once again, over Zadkiel’s shoulder, desperately, fervently, and what could he do? What could he  _do_?

“Can a serpent cry, do you think?” Zadkiel asked softly, and his tongue traced the hard line of Crowley’s jaw, making Crowley whine. “Of course, you were never  _truly_  just a serpent anyway, were you, Anthony? You were always so much more, even when you Fell. So beautiful, so  _beautiful_ —”

Gariel ground his hips closer, and Crowley’s scream hit him in the core before it reached his ears, making him blink and lean back in his chair. He needed to stop this, he needed to—

But Gariel was drawing back now, and so too were Unael and Ishnael. Crowley, exhausted, breathing heavily, limp, was held up only by Zadkiel’s arms, and Aziraphale watched as Zadkiel cradled him, kissing the tears where they fell on his cheeks.

This was  _wrong_.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

“Oh, so beautiful,” Zadkiel whispered, and Crowley sobbed. He felt so empty, so almost-alone as the others drew away, but Zadkiel was still here, still touching him, and he needed it, couldn’t bear to be apart, although he  _hated_  it. He wished he could crawl away, wished he could escape, wished he could wrap his body up in Aziraphale’s— He wished he could stop crying. He couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t stop the cries that ripped their way from his torn-up throat, and when Zadkiel undid the tie at his wrists, he couldn’t even  _do_  anything: he felt so exhausted, from the soul outward (if a soul he had) that he couldn’t even raise his arms. “You’re so lovely, Anthony, don’t you believe me? Tell us that you love us, Anthony: tell us that you love us, don’t you miss us?”

Crowley wept, felt his tears drip down his cheeks and onto the carpet, but he couldn’t say it,  _couldn’t_ , although it was  _true_. He ached for them to come back to touching him, he ached for Heaven, he wanted, he  _wanted_. He hated that it was true. He hated, hated how he missed, how he ached, how he wanted, and yet he would never go back to Heaven, never,  _couldn’t_ , couldn’t go back to not feeling, not wanting, not  _living_ —

Zadkiel lowered him down onto his elbows on the picnic blanket, his and Aziraphale’s picnic blanket, and Crowley couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t  _stop_ , even as Zadkiel straddled his back, his weight a pleasant reminder that Crowley was  _alive_ , that he was a physical being, that—

 _That_ —

Zadkiel’s fingers played a beautiful melody over Crowley’s wrought-out shoulder blades, and Crowley lowered his face to the blanket, shuddering.

“We love you,” Zadkiel murmured to the space between his shoulder blades, finishing the sentence with a kiss between them, and then he… It was pure Grace, the energy that settled on Zadkiel’s palms, dragging over his back, and Crowley shuddered.

“N… Ssstop…”

“I can’t stop, Crowley,” Zadkiel whispered, the very opposite of regretful, and it was such a dreadful whisper that Crowley wished, for just a second, that he could die. “I have just one more part of you to touch, to kiss—”

“No,  _no_ —”

Zadkiel’s Grace overpowered Crowley easily, and Crowley wailed, begged wordlessly,  _sobbed_ , as his wings unfolded. An angel’s wings – and therefore, a demon’s wings – were not like the rest of their human body, when unfolded, like this. They were a part of the  _deeper_  entity, of the Grace, the  _soul_ , whatever one could call it: Zadkiel did nothing more than brush Crowley’s feathers, and Crowley felt he would go back with the desperate, freezing, burning pain, felt that he would die,  _needed_  to die—

“ ** _You stop that_** ,” thundered a voice that Crowley’s corrupted ears could scarcely bear to hear, and he pressed his face into the blanket beneath him, smelling wicker and grass and the elderflower wine Aziraphale had spilled on it ten years previous. The windows shattered, spraying shards of crystal over the carpets. “ ** _You stop that right now_**.”

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

He couldn’t bear it.

It was one thing, the—

For Crowley’s body, that was one thing, for his faux-human form, but this? This was unspeakable, this was too far, too far, and it wasn’t  _right_ , and he couldn’t bear it. They couldn’t do this, and Aziraphale couldn’t  _let_  them, and it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, if he would Fall, if he would be Smote, it didn’t matter, it didn’t  _matter_ —

“Excuse me?” Zadkiel asked in so quiet a voice Aziraphale could scarcely hear it. His hands were loosely braced on Crowley’s lower back, and the demon was still shivering and trembling, still  _crying_ , and oh, Aziraphale felt as if he had been cleaved in two just to look at him. “You would  _dare_ , Aziraphale? You, a mere Principality, giving  _me_  orders in your celestial—”

“Get  _off_  him!” Aziraphale snapped, his hands clenched at his sides, and he saw the other Dominions, lined up, staring at him, saw Zadkiel’s indignant fury. He was going to Fall, and he would fall, but what did it matter? What did it  _matter,_ when Crowley was…? “He’s— Oh, for… He’s  _mine_.”

“I knew you were too soft on him,” Zadkiel said, standing to his feet with an inhuman grace. “You and your  _mercy_ , Aziraphale, even at Eden, even at—”

Aziraphale ignored him, and he dropped to his knees, immediately pressing his fingers into Crowley’s wings, and he concentrated, as best he could, on the love he felt for Crowley. The blasphemous, uncelestial,  _personal_  love: he loved Crowley, not in the distant, angelic way, but he  _loved_  him—

Crowley whimpered, and Aziraphale cooed softly.

“No, don’t worry, my dear, it’s quite alright, here—” He dragged Crowley up from the floor, pulled him into Aziraphale’s lap, his wings an awkward, black muss about them both, and he was still shaking, his eyes tearstained, as his hands fisted loosely in the front of Aziraphale’s woollen jumper. He sobbed, apparently unable to stop, and Aziraphale carded his fingers in Crowley’s hair, the other cupping his hip, and drew him close. “There. You’re alright, my dear, here, here, I’ve got you. I’m not going to let you go.” He felt Crowley sob, but he wasn’t struggling like he had been with the others: he dropped heavy against Aziraphale’s chest, and Aziraphale felt his energy rush against his Grace, as it had a thousand times before, felt the two of them—

 _Intertwined_.

He could feel Crowley’s desperate relief, and he leaned his chin down against Crowley’s head, cradling him in his arms. He wished he could have done this the first time, when Crowley had first Fallen, when he’d seen him, pathetic and brought low, shaking as he was right now… “I have you,” he promised, with all the tenderness he knew how, all the soft-hearted warmth Crowley had ever complained about. “I have you now, and I’m not letting you go, dear boy, I have you just here—”

Crowley shook, and his fingers gripped all the tighter at Aziraphale’s shirtfront.

And he would Fall for it.

Perhaps even more than that, perhaps—

But that didn’t bear thinking about, not right now.

He stroked Crowley’s hair, and he drew a wet cloth, cool to the touch, to his palm, beginning to draw it gently over Crowley’s bare skin, which was so incandescently hot to the touch that some of the water steamed away, but he could see the relief it brought, so he kept going.

He was utterly incognizant of the four angels, stockstill, staring with horror at the sight of them.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Zadkiel had thought himself ingenious.

The Metatron had approved, too: it would punish them both, the Metatron had said, were they to visit punishment upon the demon Crowley, to use the connection he had once had to the Host to torture him, and make Aziraphale watch. Aziraphale, they said, was too merciful with the demon Crowley – they had become too friendly, the Metatron had said, they had said Aziraphale  _liked_  the demon.

If that was the case, he dreaded the thought of Aziraphale even liking a star in Zadkiel’s vicinity.

For just a second, for just a  _second_ , Zadkiel doubted, and he thought—

The angel truly  _loves_  the demon, would defy Heaven for him.

But then he saw Aziraphale drop to his knees, and take up their mantle, torment the demon  _himself_ , and the word “mine” – so wrong in the mouth of an angel – suddenly spoke of things that had naught to do with mere possession, and everything to do with the battlegrounds of yore, of Aziraphale in holy armour, his flaming sword at his side.

Not “my loved one”: “my enemy”.

Not “you’re too cruel”: “you aren’t cruel enough.”

He was so tender with the demon in his arms, and it wasn’t as they themselves had each been, moments before: it was not, as they had been, coolly tender, their love naught more than the word of the Host, the Host from which he was apart. No, this was… Aziraphale made it  _personal_ : he said  _I_ , and he was not merely theatrical, but he—

He was  _bathing_  the demon, and the demon was—

Crowley was so exhausted he didn’t even  _struggle_  any longer. He just laid there in Aziraphale’s arms, let Aziraphale minister to him as one tended to the strangers of old, bathing their feet, soothing the aches of their pilgrimage—

“Aziraphale,” Zadkiel protested, and he felt the sickness rise in his throat, felt his brothers at either side of him. They too, were horrified: Aziraphale’s lips brushed against the glistening brow of the demon’s forehead, and Unael and Gariel had to look away. Even to a demon, even… Aziraphale’s mercy was  _merciless_.

“What?” Aziraphale asked, cupping Crowley’s cheek, and Crowley whimpered, but Aziraphale didn’t even flinch, dragging the cloth over the inside of the demon’s thigh and cleaning away the sweat there. Crowley’s wings were trembling, and he looked as if he might crumble to dust.

“You go too far,” Zadkiel said. “Even— Even to a demon, he—”

For a second, Aziraphale glanced at him, seeming uncertain, but then he set his jaw, and he looked back to Crowley, washing over Crowley’s belly. “Crowley has been my Enemy since the beginning,” Aziraphale said softly, and Crowley shuddered. He wasn’t crying any longer, so apparently gone was his hope: Zadkiel watched, disgusted, terrified, at the tenderness with which Aziraphale wiped his red cheeks. “I believe I know how to tend to him.”

“Benediction was naught but an idle threat,” Ishnael said, her voice trembling, and she sounded almost as if she was begging. The Metatron had said Aziraphale was  _soft_ , but Zadkiel didn’t see that now: Aziraphale was a terror, a figure of heavenly Justice. Merely a Principality? The idea was  _laughable_ , when he should be so steadfast in his easy cruelty, in his just  _mercy_ , and laid on the back of a demon, who would experience only agony in its wake. “You can’t— You can’t truly  _bless_  him, Aziraphale, you can’t…” She trailed off.

“Why not.” Crowley was letting out ugly noises, and Aziraphale dragged his fingers through his feathers: Crowley  _stiffened_ , and then went silent.

He did  _thwart_  the demon, then, but this—

This was unspeakable.

“Poor dear,” Aziraphale said softly, cradling Crowley to his breast, and Zadkiel saw him lean in, speak into Crowley’s ear as Zadkiel had, but… “Crowley? Crowley, dear boy? Can you hear me?”

“Ungh,” Crowley said.

“I love you,” Aziraphale whispered. Not  _we_  love you:  _I_  love you. “I love you, Crowley, I  _love_  you.” Zadkiel put his hand over his mouth, taking a horrified step back as Crowley shuddered.

“We have to go,” Zadkiel said. “We—”

“Yes, yes, very well,” Aziraphale said. His face was a mask of concentration, focused on Crowley alone, and Zadkiel shuddered at the idea of leaving the demon  _alone_  with the angel. He had never felt sympathy before, but—

Shuddering again, he turned on his heel, and he and the Dominions returned unto the Host, grateful to return to sanity. Aziraphale… And they said that the humans had made him soft! If the humans had made him that way, Zadkiel didn’t want to leave the Firmament ever again.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

He was home.

That was how it felt.

Even with the ache of the Host ripped away, he had Aziraphale, Aziraphale’s  _Grace_ , and it was so much better, so much more right: he was his own soul, his own demon, but still there was Aziraphale, warm behind him, and yes, yes, it  _hurt_ , but—

“You never told me it hurt,” Aziraphale chided him. Zadkiel and the others were gone now, and their burn was already beginning to fade from Crowley’s exhausted body, all the faster with Aziraphale’s careful cold cloth against his skin, distracting him. He basked in Aziraphale, in the familiarity of his own incompleteness.

“Dn’t hurt th’t m’ch,” Crowley mumbled, almost without opening his mouth, his face buried against Aziraphale’s chest even as Aziraphale leaned forward. “The ans’ring machine… Wa’n’t you.”

“No,” Aziraphale said. “No, it was Ishnael. Oh, my dear, I’m so  _sorry_.” He was dragging the picnic blanket closer, wrapping it around Crowley’s naked body, and Crowley shivered at the soft fabric against his oversensitive skin, but he didn’t let go of his grip on Aziraphale’s jumper.

“L’ve you,” Crowley said. The word burned his tongue: he liked the sting.

“I love you too,” Aziraphale said, and he stood, holding Crowley easily in his arms, wrapped up tightly in the blanket. Crowley didn’t know what to do with his wings, but he was  _dizzy_ , his head lolling back although he didn’t want it to, and he let Aziraphale carry him. This was— This was good. This was what he wanted, this wasn’t the Host, but it was  _home_ , it was Aziraphale, this… “Oh, I love you, Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered. “I couldn’t stop— I couldn’t… When he went for your wings, for  _you_ , it was… Oh, I oughtn’t have let it go on for so long, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Love you,” Crowley said again, louder this time, feeling his tongue steam slightly. The syllables in, “It wasn’t your fault, you pillock,” were a little beyond him right now, but he hoped they came across in spirit. “Love you. Love you, love you,  _love_  you—”

“Shhh, shh,” Aziraphale said, and he was carrying Crowley now, up the stairs. “They thought… They thought I was taking over your torture, I think.”

“Sssso did I,” Crowley muttered. “For a ssssecond. Felt like Heaven. Felt like I wassss…” He trailed off. He didn’t know how to describe it, how to say: it was like I was back, and it was all I ever wanted, ever dreamed of, ever ached for, all-encompassing and full of Grace, and full of Love, and full of the Divine, and yet still I wanted to escape, because that’s not what I am anymore, that’s not what I ever was, truly, and I couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear it— “I wanted you,” he said.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, the single syllable full of weight. “Oh. Yes. And I… And I you, oh…” They were in Aziraphale’s bedroom now, and Aziraphale started to pull away, but Crowley’s whole  _being_  erupted in protest, and he cried out, grasping at the angel’s jumper, dragging him back.

“Pleassse?”

“Oh, yes, but I just want to get you some water, Crowley, I—”

“Miracle it.”

“And your clothes—”

“Don’t need ‘em.”

“The shop—”

“ _Pleassse_ ,” Crowley begged, and in the next moment, Aziraphale was in the bed with him, his shoes disappeared, Crowley hauled bodily into his lap, his soft lap, soft and warm and  _Aziraphale_ , Aziraphale…

“Drink,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley drank, letting the water in the glass come over his dry, blistered tongue, letting it soothe his ripped-up throat. He drank the glass, and a little of the second, but refused anymore, laying his head on Aziraphale’s breast, his wings forming a dark cowl about them both.

They sat there, like that, for some minutes. Crowley could feel the slow beat of Aziraphale’s heart beneath his ear, could hear its rhythm as it slowed, as the panic ebbed away. He felt Aziraphale’s belly, fat and soft beneath Crowley’s weight, felt his warmth…

“So,” he said, hoarsely. “You broke out your celestial Voice. Could’ve shattered my eardrums.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said, awkwardly. “Yes. But I hardly meant to.”

“Very intimidating, what you said, too.”

“Do you think so?” Aziraphale asked, somewhere between absent and anxious.

“Oh, yes,” Crowley tried to drawl, but his throat was too hoarse, and he coughed. “ _You stop that. You stop that right now_. Menacing, that turn of phrase. Very scary.”

“Oh, shut up,” Aziraphale said, and he buried his nose in Crowley’s hair, clutching him so tightly that Crowley felt, truly, as if he would never let go, and it was the most relieving sensation he’d ever experienced. The pain, dull, was eclipsed by sheer  _warmth_. “Oh, I don’t know… I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Nothing, right now,” Crowley mumbled. “If you let me go, I’ll cry.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No. More of a statement of uncomfortable fact.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“Sss’alright.”

Crowley exhaled, relaxing in, closer, and Aziraphale’s lips brushed against his forehead, so tenderly, so  _gently_ …

Crowley slept.

He didn’t dream of Heaven. He never did again.

Heaven was behind him now.

 

[1] Aziraphale was not good at keeping secrets, and maintained that this was a sign of good character rather than a flaw.

[2] It didn’t feel like the right word, but it was the only one he had.

[3] He’d been around a few times, and had experienced this once or twice, although not as many times as one might expect. He didn’t care that much about sex when it was a pastime: with demons, it was a  _competition_ , and Crowley had never been competitive.

[4] Crowley was not, in fact, under the impression that Aziraphale even  _knew_  how their relationship was misconstrued by the humans going past, and tended to find it very, very funny. Aziraphale, of course, knew exactly what it looked like, and simply didn’t see the value in the effort of correcting anybody.

[5] Aziraphale had read a great deal of erotica, in the dispassionate, distantly disapproving way many curious booksellers do, and had always found many words and epithets strangely out of place. Penis, he felt, was somewhat academic for an act of love; words like  _cock_  or  _prick_  were too flagrantly indecent, and he didn’t like to swear anyway;  _manhood_  was just… Well, it was just  _silly_. “Member,” he felt, was far from imperfect, but not so terrible as anything else.

[6] Invariably, Crowley was the one pinned down, and not the one pinning. He didn’t like to dwell on whether this said anything about him, but suffice it to say, he had never been a violent person.


	3. Earth

Crowley slept for days.

He’d done it before, Aziraphale knew – he could sleep for months on end, if he wanted to, for  _years_. Aziraphale remembered, with grim distaste, the period when he’d slept for years on end, from about 1846 onward. He hadn’t gotten up until 1907, and Aziraphale had been so  _angry_ , but so glad to have him back.

But this time—

It wasn’t indolence, this time.

It wasn’t  _depression_ , either.

It was…

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley grunted. He was wrapped bodily around Aziraphale, his face buried against Aziraphale’s neck, his legs around Aziraphale’s waist. At some point, Aziraphale had managed to vanish his clothes, so that Crowley was able to press up to him, skin-to-skin. At some point, the wings had been folded away. He could…  _feel_  Crowley.

It was strange, the essence of him, lingering on his chest, all wrapped up with his own Grace, and it felt  _right_. He thought about it, now, how wrong and uncomfortable Zadkiel had felt when he’d brushed close to him, overpowering him, making him feel—

It made one feel  _small_ , at times. Heaven.

That wasn’t how one was meant to feel: he wasn’t meant to feel  _anything_ , and he certainly wasn’t meant to feel like he was small, because he wasn’t meant to feel like an individual at all. He was meant to be one of the Host, and yet he’d never felt like that, not ever, but with Crowley…

“Crowley,” he said again. “I need to get up.”

“ _No_ ,” Crowley said sharply, sounding wide awake, and Aziraphale moved to sit up. Crowley let out a desperate little noise, but Aziraphale ignored it: he didn’t push Crowley  _off_ , but let him stay wrapped around him, one hand loosely supporting him by his arse, his fingers dug into the surprisingly thick muscle of his thigh. Crowley exhaled, and Aziraphale felt the slight change in his body, the way his limbs became a little less human in their definition, wrapped more tightly around his body.

Not wrapped.

_Coiled_.

“Don’t put me down,” Crowley muttered.

“I won’t,” Aziraphale promised, and he felt scales under his fingers as he moved from his bedroom into the little kitchenette, flicking on the kettle. He felt Crowley’s hand grip tightly at the back of his shoulder, and he wondered if he ought say something, if he ought say…

He wasn’t going to Fall. Angels were  _supposed_  to love everything, even demons, even their nemeses, and he couldn’t be faulted for loving him, for  _loving_ … But Crowley wasn’t meant to love. He wasn’t meant to feel love for anything, not for  _anything_ : he was meant to lose that, when he Fell, in favour of other things, in favour of hate, and cruelty, and—

And other things.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said.

“I’m sleeping.”

“I love you,” Aziraphale said. For a long few moments, as Aziraphale made tea one-handed, Crowley still coiled around his body, there was silence between them, and he felt the slow, inhumanly slow, heartbeat of Crowley’s body against his skin, felt how  _cool_  he was. “Crowley?”

“I heard you,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale inhaled, very shakily, and watched his hand tremble just slightly as he poured hot water into the mug, feeling Crowley’s arms shift slightly where they were wrapped tightly around his neck, felt Crowley’s lips shift against the side of his ear. It  _hurt_ , surprisingly, that Crowley should say that.  _I heard you_. It was a curiously cold thing to say.

Aziraphale felt, for the second time, a moment of doubt.

And then Crowley drawled, “What do you want me to do? Quote poetry at you?” Aziraphale felt his breath catch in his throat, felt the embarrassed burn in his cheeks, but before he could retort, Crowley said,  _“Let us twain walk from the rest. Now we are together privately, do you discard ceremony—”_

“I always preferred—”

“Wilde to Whitman, yes, angel, I know.” Crowley didn’t sound angry: he merely sounded amused to be interrupted, like he was expecting it. Had he been expecting it? He oughtn’t have interrupted, but he hadn’t thought about it, when he’d done it, he hadn’t…

Aziraphale swallowed, and shame settled on his shoulders, dropping into the spaces where Crowley’s arms weren’t wrapped around his neck. “Sorry,” he said. He thought, oddly, of the dove in his shirt sleeve, back at Warlock’s birthday party… That hadn’t been so long ago, really, but it felt an age away now. “Go on.”

“It’s four lines, angel. If you know the first two, you know the next ones.”

“But—”

“I love you,” Crowley said. Aziraphale felt like he’d pop, his head felt abruptly so light, his heart so full, and he clutched all the tighter at Crowley’s body, feeling him close, feeling his breath on Aziraphale’s shoulder.

Something… changed. Aziraphale couldn’t have defined it for all the world, couldn’t have put it into words, because it was beyond words, beyond mere explanation or description, beyond such paltry things of Earth as that. It was a change on the basest level, a sort of soft whisper of energy against energy, soul against soul…

Except that Aziraphale didn’t have a soul, and he didn’t know what demons had.

“Crowley?” he asked.

Crowley sighed. “I was so certain they’d Fall,” he said. “But things aren’t like how they used to be. You know? It was much easier to Fall, in those days. I never even meant to. But I figure, if it’s so much harder to Fall, you know, other things must be easier.”

Aziraphale didn’t know what that meant, but powered on.

“You were so surprised,” Aziraphale said. “When… When you Fell. You landed in the dirt, in the wet, and you were trembling so much, poor thing.” He was astonished by the  _feeling_  in his chest, the ache he felt just looking back on it, on the idea of Crowley, when he’d been neither man nor angel nor serpent, even, when he’d just been— “ _Do_  you remember?”

“Heaven?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I remember. Bits and pieces.”

“I never knew that,” Aziraphale said.

“You don’t know lots of things,” Crowley said. He had gone back to sounding  _sleepy_ , now, and he mumbled the words against Aziraphale’s neck. “You’re an idiot.”

Aziraphale frowned. “I am  _not_ , dear boy.”

“’Course you are,” Crowley said. “Me too.”

Aziraphale picked up his tea, and he brought it up to his mouth, taking a sip and tasting the tea on his tongue, tasting its fragrance. “Was it— Was it wrong of me, do you think, to have never asked, before?”

“Someone once told me,” Crowley said slowly, in the tone of one saying things he didn’t think that he would ever say, and that he had reservations about  _trying_  to say, “that there was Right and Wrong. Kind of implied it was as simple as that.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, remembering Eden, remembering the strange, right-but-not-Right sensation of standing by the side, Crowley beside him in the grass. His chest felt oddly light, despite the weight of demon on it, and he dragged his fingers up Crowley’s spine, feeling him shiver at the sensation. “He  _does_  sound like an idiot.”

“Love you,” Crowley murmured in his ear. Aziraphale shivered.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Aziraphale asked. “Your tongue isn’t made for words like that.”

Crowley didn’t answer. There was a moment’s pause, and then he said, “Zadkiel was right.”

Aziraphale felt abruptly cold and sick to his stomach, and he leaned back, dragging Crowley by his hair from around his neck. The demon blinked at him, his yellow eyes slow to alight on Aziraphale’s face, and Aziraphale couldn’t get over the desperate, ugly anxiety that burned inside him. How could he say that?  _How_? “Was he?” Aziraphale asked.

“Yeah,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He reached up, and his hand cupped Aziraphale’s cheek, thumb playing over the skin there. He inhaled, and then said, “Did you think you were going to Fall? When you… When you told them to stop?”

“But I’m not going to,” Aziraphale said, and hoped that it was true. “They didn’t… You know, Heaven is more, ah, about appearances, anyway. So it was— They didn’t, dear boy, they thought I was continuing their torment of you.”

“But did you think,” Crowley said, “that you were going to Fall, angel? Were you risking that, for me?”

Aziraphale bit his lip. Crowley was looking at him, and many people were unsettled by his gaze, but Aziraphale wasn’t. He’d always liked the uniqueness of Crowley’s eyes, the beautiful colour in them – almost no one had colour like that in their eyes. Almost no one at all.

“I couldn’t bear it,” Aziraphale said softly. “Watching them… Hurt you, like that. It wasn’t— It wasn’t right, I didn’t think. I couldn’t keep watching. I’m only sorry I didn’t intervene sooner, like I ought have, I’m—”

“I love you,” Crowley said. He smiled, and he stuck out his tongue, the forked head of it flicking over Aziraphale’s nose, and making him feel like he was almost about to sneeze. “See? No blisters.”

“But it  _should_  hurt, shouldn’t it?” Aziraphale asked, uncertainly. He had never much liked to be uncertain of things, ineffable plans aside[1], whereas Crowley sometimes seemed quite content with the unpredictability of the universe.  _Sometimes_ , at least. Now seemed to be one of them. Crowley grinned, and Aziraphale looked at his sharp, sharp teeth, at his rakish, snakish features. He wasn’t handsome, exactly, except that he was. He always had features that seemed to belong to a very different century, regardless of the century you were in: his features seemed too young for the epoch, and equally too ancient.

Underneath all that nonsense, of course, he was quite beautiful, corrupted or not.

“Nah,” Crowley decided. “Not at all.”

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Crowley dreamed.

It was a funny sort of dream, the sort that’s halfway connected to reality the whole way through, half anchored to where you  _really_  are, in your bed. It was a dream of soft sensations and susurrations: he dreamed of the way bookshops smelled, dusty and thick with ancient paper, of gilt and old leather and book glue. He dreamed of the sound of pages turning, slowly, one-by-one. He dreamed of the sensation of thick, sweet-scented wool and tweed beneath his face, and then  _skin_ , warm skin that used to make him ache, and now just made him feel comfortably at home, made him feel…

He smiled in his sleep, wriggled closer.

Bottles that were open, and half-full, but now stoppered… Rows and rows of them, the dream Crowley thought. Rows and rows and rows of open bottles, and just one, just one, with a cork.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

On the seventh day, they stopped resting, and got out of bed.

Aziraphale stood in the middle of his bedroom floor, and he stayed obediently still as Crowley had drawn his shirt onto his shoulders, his trousers onto his legs. He’d even knelt down to put Aziraphale’s socks on, and neatly clip the garter for them into place against his calf, although he complained that people hadn’t worn them in at least sixty years, and Aziraphale had wryly replied that  _people_  could do whatever they liked, but that he preferred his socks to stay neatly stationed where they were supposed to be.

“You had a valet once, didn’t you, angel?” Crowley asked absently. His gaze was far away, like he was thinking of something else as he did up Aziraphale’s tie, doing some sort of complicated knot Aziraphale would never attempt himself, but  _did_ , he would reluctantly admit, look quite snazzy.

“Only for a few weeks,” Aziraphale said. “And only while I got the poor man a job working for a real master, you know. He was a nice young chap, but it, er, well. It felt very odd, truth be told, and I didn’t much like all the having to give him instructions, or worry about what he was cleaning, and such. You’ve had servants before, though?”

“A few times,” Crowley said dismissively, smoothing out Aziraphale’s tie. As soon as he took his hands away, it rumpled itself to fit with Aziraphale, and he scowled at it, but relented, reaching back for Aziraphale’s vest. It was a favourite of his – he had bought it in 1973, and had taken very careful care of it. Crowley looked at it as if it was a dangerously sick animal, and as if whatever ugly thing it was that the animal had, he was worried he might catch it.

“It’s from the Aran Islands,” Aziraphale said, with mild reproach.

“You should have left it there,” Crowley replied, and drew it onto his shoulders, beginning to do up the buttons. His fingers lingered on the soft expanse of Aziraphale’s belly under his clothes as he did so, and Aziraphale saw his lips shift into a slight smile.

“I never knew that you outranked me,” Aziraphale said. “Did you?”

“I knew, I think,” Crowley said, adjusting Aziraphale’s collar and making sure his tie settled naturally under the fabric of the woollen vest. “But it never seemed all that important. I don’t think I’m really made for ranks.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Hell has ranks, of course.”

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed. His expression was unreadable. “It does, doesn’t it?” Taking up a tweed blazer from Aziraphale’s wardrobe, settled it onto his shoulders, doing up two of the buttons, and then two of his fingers went to the buttonhole. Aziraphale expected him to straighten something p, but he didn’t: a white carnation bloomed, settled into its place, and Aziraphale smiled.

“Oh, my dear,” he murmured, and Crowley leaned in, brushing his lips against Aziraphale’s. It wasn’t like the kisses Zadkiel had foisted on him: it was soft and chaste, Crowley’s tongue kept neatly folded up in his mouth. Aziraphale felt the soft shimmer of Crowley’s unique essence against him: he tasted distantly of old-fashioned petroleum and new leather; he tasted of gunpowder and expensive cologne; he tasted of Eden, of ozone and verdant, luscious plants; he tasted of fresh blood spattered on grass. Aziraphale liked it. Angels weren’t supposed to like things, but he liked all that  _very_  much. “You’re still naked, of course.”

“So?” Crowley asked, with a sly smile.

“We can’t go anywhere with you like  _that,_ dear boy.”

“Sure we can, angel.”

Aziraphale gave Crowley a stern look. “And the people of London?”

“Oh,  _them_? They don’t notice anything.”

“I think they’d notice  _this_.” Aziraphale made a vague gesture to Crowley’s body. He was slim, with pointy edges – he liked, he’d said once, having pointy elbows, pointy shoulders, a pointy chin[2] – but there was muscle on his body, even if it wasn’t as defined as the humans thought the fashion was these days… The Greeks had too, of course. They’d gone in for that chiselled look. Fashion, Aziraphale mused, was quite cyclical.

Crowley didn’t snap his fingers, or give a wave of his hand, or anything flashy like that. He was just naked one moment, and clothed the next, in a light suit – this one wasn’t the usual black, with the blood-red shirt, or the blood-red tie or pocket square. This one was a light blue, one that Crowley had worn before but not for a good ten years or so, not since the last time they’d had a picnic, and Aziraphale reached out, gently touching the fabric of the sleeve, and he glanced down at his own tie.

“We match,” he said.

“Oh,” Crowley said airily, in the voice of one apparently not paying attention, who was paying very close attention indeed. “Do we?”

Aziraphale reached up, brushing his fingers over Crowley’s buttonhole, and he watched the white petals bloom beneath his fingers, the green stem of the carnation neatly settling into place behind his lapel. “Yes,” he said softly, and Crowley kissed him again.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Crowley folded up the picnic blanket, and he summoned his sunglasses to hand, sliding them up onto his nose. The picnic basket was filled by the time they walked out to the car, and Crowley let Aziraphale into the car first, sliding in to sit beside him. Aziraphale shuffled closer on the bench, so that they were shoulder to shoulder, and Crowley smiled as he turned the key in the ignition.

“It’s a shame about Blandford Forum,” Aziraphale said. He spoke very calmly and conversationally, for a being who had his knees drawn almost up to his chest, and whose hands were crammed desperately over his eyes to keep him from looking at the road as they thundered along it at inhuman speeds, no doubt leaving scorch marks behind them.

“I’ve told you, angel,” Crowley said, in the impatient voice of one who is revisiting a  _very_  old argument[3]. “Blandford Forum is still  _there_. They just closed the railway station. We can drive there right now, if you want—”

“It’s not the same,” Aziraphale said stubbornly, and he peeked through his fingers, then yelped as a lorry loomed into view, although as soon as he closed his eyes again, it leapt surprisedly out of their way and found itself on the other side of the junction with no memory of how it got there. “If we can’t get the train, I…  _Oh!”_  He pressed his face into Crowley’s shoulder, gripping tightly at his arm as Crowley made a hairpin turn, accelerating.

Crowley laughed, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, and he flicked on the Blaupunkt.

He felt different. He felt  _very_  different, actually, like he had the first time, but—

Better, of course.

Much better.

“Do you really think they won’t Fall?” Aziraphale asked, an hour or so later. He hadn’t asked where they were going, but then, perhaps he knew – or perhaps he didn’t  _need_  to know. Now and then – although not often – he let Crowley surprise him.

“They won’t,” Crowley said. “Falling is about…  _doubt_. I don’t think they doubt, angel. I don’t think they doubt that what they were doing was Right, and Holy; they definitely don’t doubt themselves, and they don’t doubt what they are.” It was all honest, of course. He wanted to be honest: he quite liked being honest, really. Honesty was quite a bit different to  _Truth_ , he realized, now, and wondered why he hadn’t before.

“What they are?” Aziraphale repeated.

“They don’t doubt being angels, I mean, being Dominions. That’s the big thing of it, I think: I could have done all the bad things I wanted, if I never realized that I wasn’t a proper angel, if I didn’t doubt it. It wasn’t just doubting Him, or doubting Justice… It was self-doubt. That’s what I think, anyway.”

There was a long pause. Aziraphale, Crowley noticed, in a sort of distant, affectionate way, was still wrapped tightly around his arm, his head rested on Crowley’s shoulder. It was very sharp, Crowley thought guiltily, and he softened it out a little, feeling Aziraphale relax.

“Do you really?” Aziraphale asked.

“Something like that, anyway.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said.

“The thing is,” Crowley said, “I’ve been doubting again.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Doubting what?”

“All sorts. Mostly, Hell. That is to say, me.”

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“Doubting…  _Self-doubt_ , you mean?”

“Uh huh.”

“But you… Can you  _do_  that?”

“Apparently.”

Aziraphale sat up, and he touched Crowley’s shoulder as if touching it for the first time,  _feeling_  it for the first time. Crowley didn’t look at his expression, but he felt the bafflement radiating off him in waves, followed by a sort of—

_Triumph_.

Crowley grinned.

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his voice admiring, thick with softly-whispered awe. There was a note of uncertainty in it, but then, with Aziraphale, there always was – he was always uncertain of  _almost_ everything. “You  _wicked_  thing.”

“Benediction, angel,” Crowley purred with self-satisfaction. “It’s a dangeroussss thing.”

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

Adam put his hands in his pockets, and he walked down the green. It was a sunny day in Tadfield, and he was still in his school uniform. They all were, but  _uniform_  was not really the sort of adjective that could really be ascribed to it, no matter how much the noun fit. Adam’s shirt and tie hung off him, giving him a sort of ruffled look and complementing his scuffed knees and bruised elbows, and the rather dashing scrape he was currently sporting on the side of his jaw[4]. Pepper was in a distinctly  _non-_ regulation skort, without pleats anywhere in sight, that left her legs free for the kicking, and Brian wore two jumpers at once, one extremely scuffed and messily darned one, over his shirt, and another one – Adam’s – was tied loosely around his waist.

Only Wensleydale wore his uniform neatly, but it was so neat that one could never have imagined it on an actual, living schoolchild, and he looked as if he’d stepped off the cover of a  _very_  fictional book from seventy years ago: his shirt was neatly pressed and ironed, his tie perfect, and he wore a blazer, instead of the standard jumper[5].

They stopped at the crest of the hill, looking down.

“It’s them,” Pepper said. She said this, because she looked at them, and thought she ought remember them, but didn’t quite – and then again, she also did. It was an odd sensation.

“Yeah,” Brian said.

“Mm,” Wensleydale hummed quietly. “They’re matching.”

“They used to. Not quite now, though,” Adam said, and Wensleydale frowned, because he felt this wasn’t true, but Adam was already walking down the hill to meet them.

The older one, the one that looked like he was in his fifties[6], was sitting up, one leg curled loosely beneath the other, which was outstretched on a red picnic blanket, and he was reaching into an old-fashioned picnic blanket for a bottle of dusty red wine, pouring a little more of it into a glass. The other one, the one that looked like he was a little younger than thirty[7], was sprawled on the picnic blanket in a position that didn’t quite look possible for a human to manage, his head in the older one’s lap. He was holding a book in his hands, and he was gesturing wildly with one hand as he read from it.

The two of them looked up when the Them came up to the edge of the blanket, and both of them smiled.

The smiles  _did not_  match.

The one lying down, with snakey limbs, smiled in a fond, vaguely paternal way, friendly and confident in his friendliness; the one sitting up, halfway holding his wineglass to his lips, smiled in the way of one who would very much like to be “good with children,” but had never really gotten the hang of it, and was grimly aware of the fact.

They looked to Adam, who looked to be about eleven years old[8], and to the Them.

“Hello, Adam,” said the one lying down.

“Hello,” echoed the one sitting up.

“You look different,” Adam said.

“Yes,” agreed the one lying down. “You don’t. Like the new uniform?”

“It’s alright. Don’t like the tie, though.”

“I could teach you a different knot for it, if you like. Something a bit cooler than the old Windsor.”

“What’s that one?” Adam asked, gesturing to the bigger one’s tie, and helooked down at it.

“That?” asked the one lying down. “That’s an Eldredge, that is.”

“I don’t like it,” Pepper said. “Looks stupid.”

“I do,” Wensleydale said, and the one sitting up gave him a grateful smile.

“Seems to me,” Adam said slowly, his gaze on the man in the sunglasses, “that there’s more important things than ties and that.”

“Is there? I hadn’t heard.” The man took off his sunglasses, and he handed the book to the other man, leaning up on his elbows. His eyes were a funny yellow-green colour, the sort of colour nobody’s eyes were, but they were set in human eyes, with human irises, human pupils. Humanish, anyway. “Seems to me I haven’t got a horse in that race, if you take my drift.”

“I do,” Adam said, and he did. “What about you?”

“Er,” said the other one. “I’m not sure. I don’t think I’ve decided yet.”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t decided yet either,” Adam confessed, and it seemed to give the one sitting up some comfort: he smiled, and then he set the wine aside. His hand settled instead on the young one’s shoulder, the other one clutching the book to his chest.

“Who  _are_  you?” Pepper asked, with some confident accusation.

“I’m Crowley. Anthony Crowley,” said the young one, but he didn’t move to sit up. “And this is Ezra Fell. We’re Adam’s godfathers.”

“Aren’t you meant to have a godfather  _and_  a godmother?” Wensleydale asked suspiciously.

“Oh, I’m sure there’s a pair of godmothers knocking about somewhere,” Ezra Fell said, sounding somewhat anxious.

“Don’t need ‘em,” Adam said. “You two’re fine.” Ezra Fell beamed, smiling very warmly, and Anthony Crowley put his hand over his heart, giving Adam a grin of slightly too-sharp teeth.

“Would you like to sit down, and have something to eat?” asked Ezra Fell. “There is space on the blanket, if  _he_  moves.”

“Big if, of course,” Anthony Crowley said.

“No,” Adam said. “No, we have stuff to do. But you guys can stay as long as you want.”

Most adults, mused the Them, would laugh or smirk or something, when hearing this sort of permission from Adam. They always seemed to think it was funny, or silly, that Adam should act quite so imperatorial[9]. His godfathers didn’t act like that at all. They just smiled slightly, almost gratefully, and gave nods of their heads.

They almost matched.

“Good afternoon, children,” Ezra Fell said. The Them stared at him, and Anthony Crowley rolled his eyes.

“Don’t  _call_  them that, angel,” he said dryly, and as the Them walked past, they heard the two of them bickering, until Crowley went back to reading from the book he’d had. Odd pair, they thought, but they forgot about them, soon enough.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

“But he  _couldn’t_  have,” the Metatron said, and the Voice rang out with unmistakable horror.

“ _Benediction_ ,” Zadkiel muttered. “On a  _demon_. It’s— You said he was  _soft!”_

“He  _was_ ,” the Metatron maintained miserably, with a little bit of fear.

“Well, he’s not  _now_. Does he still count as the Enemy?”

“Crowley, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Grey area.”

“And Aziraphale?”

“The same.”

“Oh.”

The both of them thought of Crowley. Shuddering in an ethereal way, they hurriedly changed the subject.

✲ ✶ ✲ ✶ ✲

“We  _could_  go to Blandford Forum,” Aziraphale said softly. He was gently carding his fingers through Crowley’s feathers, grooming them neatly, and Crowley was shuddering in his place in Aziraphale’s lap, his arms wrapped tightly around the angel’s neck, his mouth pressed against the side of his temple. Aziraphale couldn’t reach everything, like this, but that wasn’t really the point. His wings brushed against Crowley’s, burnished gold against red-sheened black, and every time, Crowley sighed in soft bliss. “Tomorrow?”

“Alright, angel,” Crowley murmured. “Whatever you want.”

“If you want it to?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Good.”

Crowley kissed him, and for just a second, they sat like that on the bed, their noses pressed together, Crowley’s hands on his cheeks, Aziraphale’s fisted in his fathers, and around them, their wings formed a natural cocoon, the two of them together, a natural pair.

_Not_ , as one might guess,  _one_  entity. They were both far too stubborn for that, and they’d each had their fill of the collective, Crowley especially.

But a pair, yes.

A matching one.

 

[1] And even then, although he wouldn’t be caught admitting to it.

[2] The latter, Aziraphale had thought several times that week when it was pointed judiciously into the soft meat of his chest, he could probably do without.

[3] In fact, it was one of their newer arguments, clocking in at a little over 25 years old.

[4] He wore this scrape more for the look of the thing than anything else.

[5] The school uniform shop hadn’t even  _had_  blazers, until Wensleydale had mentioned it in a vaguely mournful tone, and Adam had taken offence.

[6] He wasn’t.

[7] He wasn’t.

[8] He was.

[9] This word was entirely Wensleydale’s addition to the Them’s lexicon, and it made many local adults do a double-take and surreptitiously reach for a dictionary after the Them confidently said that  _no_ , they  _didn’t_  mean imperious.


End file.
